Hundreds of business people and educators on Wednesday heard one of the world’s top managment gurus talk about what it takes to build a partnership between the two groups to create an environment that will sustain innovation in education.

“Innovation is a process by which we create new sources of value,” said Peter Senge, the founding chair of the Society of Organizational Learning, a senior lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the critically acclaimed book, “The Fifth Discipline:The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.”

Senge noted that innovation and schools are two words that are not often put together — at least in the eyes of business people.

Privately, business people express profound frustration with public education in the United States, he said. But he said in many cases business people don’t understand the complexity of the education system in their demands for measurement, accountability and reform.

“How many of you would like to be reformed?” he asked of the private sector attendees, saying there is a language connotation issue at work in the dynamic. “Schools reform. Businesses innovate.”

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